Ableton Forum

Any tips? My timing is a bit off and after multiple try's I finally landed on one recording that is close to what I want if not exactly and now I'm going through the clip and making adjustment's. I'll get it right eventually, but I was wondering if there was a simpler way than scanning a whole clip for faults. I quantized my recording initially, so how do you do it?

get a good midi controller, hook it to a fast processor, turn off the grid and learn to crush the piano. im pretty nice on the a-l keys myself.

i dont think its possible man that human element isn't necessarily a bad thing though.

I guess I can't argue with that but, by definition the human element is velocity x note value x time. Which were all present while I recorded. I spent a couple hours adjusting what was recorded and now I wonder what for when what I was searching for I initially made those past few hours ago lol. Guess processor's just aren't fast enough yet...

Correction; my processor. I thought I had the fastest one. I'm running like 2.3 or 2.4GHz, I did some research and found out they run faster than that.

r_kennico wrote:Correction; my processor. I thought I had the fastest one. I'm running like 2.3 or 2.4GHz, I did some research and found out they run faster than that.

I used to record midi into an ancient PC (386 processor) running a really old version of Cubase on Windows 3.1 using a pretty bad midi controller and had no issue with midi timing then! You don't need a fast computer to record midi and most controllers will not fail on the timing thing, so that leaves the playing. Most people just quantize everything, but personally I like the human element. Problem is it is very hard to manually create the human element - it is a skill in itself, so the better option as the previous poster said is to get better at playing! Or maybe even do several takes and edit large sections - similar to what one would do with audio.

processor and all aside you can do what you already did and manually go through the midi fixing anything that is significantly off while leaving a somewhat natural groove in place (provided it sounds good). sure it may take a bit of time but so does manually riding the fader on a vocal instead of tossing a slamming compressor on.

on the other hand you can quantize the midi to grid then bring in a groove of your choice. all up to you really.

Is the midi interface delayed or is your hearing/music abilities? (not taking a stab...just curious). I am not a trained keyboardist, so when I attempt to use mine it does come off as a bit off...but off adds character. Allow for some deviation from a beat because overall, it just becomes a loop anyway and will always fit within the paramaters of ableton's setup. Step sequencers work in lieu of being good on the keys...but can sound robotic if used on every track within a song. Just some thoughts to consider.

Well, I'm a fan of the human element. I play guitar and have never relied on a metronome. I love to improvise and feel it, but I've played keyboard all my life too, just not as proficient at it I guess. I thought I was rather on time while I was recording. The issue was the note value's were either too short or a little too long, coming in before and after the beat, that sorta thing. I would be curious to set up the driver error compensation and see if that make's a difference. Could someone tell me how to get back to lesson's within Ableton Live? Trying to get to "Setting Up Audio I/O", I forgot, lol!

"Manual Moment" I got it. Post my findings later.

Guess it couldn't have been that. That's only for recording audio into Live. Guess I just need to keep working on the keyboard and get better as I go along in regards to timing.

The human element definitely adds some dynamics to my recordings

r_kennico wrote:Well, I'm a fan of the human element. I play guitar and have never relied on a metronome. I love to improvise and feel it, but I've played keyboard all my life too, just not as proficient at it I guess. I thought I was rather on time while I was recording. The issue was the note value's were either too short or a little too long, coming in before and after the beat, that sorta thing. I would be curious to set up the driver error compensation and see if that make's a difference. Could someone tell me how to get back to lesson's within Ableton Live? Trying to get to "Setting Up Audio I/O", I forgot, lol!

The audio drivers error compensation has little to do with midi. You can turn audio off and still record midi in and play the midi back to external instruments. Presuming you have the an external synth, maybe try this - turn audio off and record some midi in. If nothing else, it will verify your audio driver/latency etc has nothing to do with your issue.

Could it be something to do with your keyboard? Does it sound different when you record (so youre actually playing "live" ) to when you play back what you just recorded?

+1 for the human element!

maybe
Edit/recording quantization ?